No sense in waiting: Cavaliers remove doubt, pour it on Williams boys

In the first edition of the city rivalry in boys’ basketball, Cummings High School sharpshooter Keith McAdoo had an off-night with two points.

He made amends in the second meeting between the Cavaliers and Williams High School.

McAdoo dropped in 15 points to lead a balanced scoring attack in a 75-40 Cummings victory Friday night at Cummings.

The Cavaliers (4-0) blew open what was a 26-14 game at halftime with 12-0 and 7-0 runs in the third quarter. In the second half, Cummings held a 49-26 scoring advantage. Quite a difference from when the teams met Dec. 7, when Cummings won 53-41 and needed to pull away late.

So, how much was McAdoo thinking about that first time the teams played?

“A little bit,” McAdoo said with a chuckle. “The first (shot) got me going. We had a good week of practice, so I knew we were going to play good.”

Cummings coach Chas Criss said going back to video review of the first game made the difference in a couple aspects of the game.

“We watched the film, made some adjustments on the press,” Criss said. “Made some adjustments with trying to get it inside, some more movement instead of just pass, pass, pass, pass, shoot a 3.”

And, while the Cavaliers mostly struggled with long-range shooting in the first matchup, they were spot-on with 11 successful 3-pointers Friday night. McAdoo led the way with three, but eight Cavaliers hit from deep before the final buzzer sounded.

Quae Pinnix hit one of those 3s along the way to scoring 10 points. With Cummings playing for the first time since Dec. 11, Pinnix said there was plenty of time to prepare for the cross-city rivalry.

“We made a lot of adjustments … fit their defense, so we’ll know what to run and stuff and make it easier to get baskets,” Pinnix said.

On the defensive end, Cummings extended its stretch to four games in which it hasn’t allowed more than 50 points. A lot of that has to do with center Josh Murray, who blocked 10 shots to go with 13 points.

Not only did Murray’s points — including a pair of two-handed dunks — boost the Cavaliers on the scoreboard, his presence on the block helped free up McAdoo and the other shooters.

“Trying to get inside to big Josh. If we get it down to Josh, they’ll collapse on him, so once they collapse that’ll get us the ball to shoot more,” McAdoo said.

After so many blocked shots that not only came from Murray but also from several of the Cavaliers’ rangy forwards, Williams coach Ryan Freeman was left to wonder why his team failed to adjust.

“I thought for sure after the eighth block we would have started throwing up some shot fakes,” Freeman said.

That wasn’t the only thing that had Freeman perplexed.

Williams (2-5), which was led by eight points apiece from Ben Kelley and Alan Sharpe, didn’t display the same toughness that it shown prior to Friday night’s game, the coach said.

“Regardless of what the scoreboard said, I’m more disappointed of what type of team showed up (Friday) night,” Freeman said. “Because that’s not the blue-collar, hard-nosed team that we were prior to this game. That’s what I’ve really been enjoying, is just that type of personality. That didn’t show up (Friday) night.”